Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: Sadist podcast where power is refined, impact sharpens, and leaders move from success that contains to ecstatic legacy.
[00:00:22] Speaker A: Hello and welcome. I'm your host, Alara Sage.
And today I want to talk about conflict as resolution.
Oftentimes we see these as before and after, or opposite sides of the same coin, perhaps.
But when we alter our perspective of what conflict is actually offering us, we alter our experience with it. So what is conflict in understanding that the universe is sound? It is harmonic.
So you can think of conflict like you would think of a song, and in that song, there is a note that is out of tune. We can all hear that note. Even if you're not musically inclined, you. You can sense when a note is off. I know because I'm not musically inclined.
You can feel it in your body, even.
In fact, it feels very much like nails on a chalkboard.
It's. When that note is not in harmonic resonance to the other notes, it stands out.
It disrupts the melody. This is what conflict is.
It is a note that disrupts.
Now, this can be in your interpersonal relationships, this can be conflict between you and your partner. This can be a conflict between you and your employees.
This can be a conflict within your business, between teams.
This can be a conflict between your business and the market. The moment conflict arises is an opportunity to recognize the note that has come off tune.
And what happens when that note comes off tune? Right. We spoke to.
It really aggravates our bodies.
This is something that is well known in torture, that if you use certain sounds together, it disrupts the biological fluidity of the body. It actually can disrupt the systems in the body.
And conflict in our physical reality isn't any different.
So when there's this note, per se, that is of dissonance, it disrupts the flow of energy.
And energy is everything.
Energy is money. Energy is time.
Energy is creativity, creation, projects, ideas.
Energy is connection, collaboration.
It's literally everything.
So when we have conflict and we have a note that is out of tune, we are causing disruption in the flow.
And this is of everything. Even the smallest little tiny note, perhaps in a very long song or a note that is a little bit fainter than the others, it's not so forward and impactful. Even that note, when out of tune, disrupts.
It's not about the size of the conflict, though. Oftentimes that is how we relate to conflict. The little conflicts we might ignore or brush under the rug, waiting for them to grow into bigger conflicts before we actually address them.
And we're only putting out the fires or addressing the bigger conflicts.
But the truth is that oftentimes conflict starts with very little, very subtle.
And it's only when you're not listening and you're ignoring that note that is out of tune. Because whatever reason you don't want to rewrite the song, you don't want to put the effort in, or you don't understand what it really means that that conflict now grows into a much bigger issue.
So for leaders, for entrepreneurs, it's very powerful to understand that conflict is here for you.
And conflict is a way that your physical reality is communicating with you. You can think of it like a biofeedback, which is a machine that works with your body and informs what your body is telling it through the systems.
But you can have biofeedback, so to speak, with your universe. You can have biofeedback, so to speak, with your business.
And that biofeedback is, is there any conflict or not? And instead of seeing conflict as wrong or bad or failure, seeing conflict as communication. So how do we do this? How do we begin to recognize conflict from a different perspective?
So the first thing is it's not personal.
Even when it seems very, very personal.
For instance, a conflict between you and your partner, where he or she is pointing the finger at you.
Conflict is always interrelational. It's between, like the note before the note is out of tune and the note that is after the note that is out of tune.
The conflict exists in that sequence, doesn't exist just in the note.
So recognizing that it's not personal to you, it's about the relationship.
It's about the relationship between you and your partner. It's about the relationship between you and your employees, it's about the relationship between the teams, it's about the relationship between your business and the market, et cetera, et cetera.
And in that relationship, there's something that's wanting to change.
There's something that isn't anymore in harmonic resonance, or maybe it never was. So when we take out the personal side of it, even when it seems very personal, we create space.
Because it doesn't feel good that something is your fault, your problem.
But it can feel good to take ownership of a situation.
There's a conflict here, and I want to come to the understanding of what that conflict is and what it is trying to show me.
Now you're in a place of power.
Whereas the minute we are either avoiding conflict or just trying to turn the conflict around and point it at anybody or anything else, blaming, whether it's the Market or your partner or part of your business, that is a disempowered state.
So to be in power, in conflict is to be present to it without taking it personally, to be willing to see all that the conflict is showing you.
Because that is where the learning happens, that is where you can make the shift, the altercation, whatever needs to happen, and create the fluidity. Again, that's leadership.
So first and foremost, now taking it personal.
Second, what is the conflict between what is the relationship? Right? Because sometimes it's obvious, right? The conflict is between you and a partner because he or she is upset with you. And therefore that's very obvious. But that's not always the case. Sometimes when something in your business was working and now all of a sudden it's not, is it the product or the program? Is it the market relationship?
Is it, you know, the way that it's being presented, right? The marketing or the messaging and the way that the potential clients are or are not receiving it, where is the conflict?
So recognizing the sides of the conflict, and ironically, there's generally two sides, even when sometimes it seems like there's more, you can understand that more than one might be working slightly different, but they're together. There's generally two sides, just like we have two sides of everything in humanity, if you haven't noticed. So what are those two sides? What are the aspects that are in conflict?
Now, hearing both sides, if you are a part of one of those sides, you have to be willing to the best of your ability to listen to yourself. From a state of neutrality, can you observe yourself?
Because as a leader you want to understand what I mean when I say this.
Can you observe your emotions? Can you observe your thoughts? Can you speak from your heart or speak from your anger or speak from your emotions and observe what comes out of your mouth and how you act, how you behave?
Because self awareness is crucial for leadership.
So listening to both sides, even if you're one of those sides, and from the best of your ability, listening from a state of neutrality.
So neutrality is non judgment, neutrality is an open heart.
Can you truly listen? And beyond whatever the obvious, beneath the obvious, between the lines, so to speak to the whole story, and what I mean by that is, if it is a person who is speaking right, can you hear their words and watch their mannerisms and feel their body and have a sense of what they're actually saying and where they're actually coming from?
Or are you only listening to the words and defining each and every word very explicitly? And same with if you know the conflict is with a product.
Are you letting yourself observe the product from a state of neutrality, like as if from new eyes, as if you've never seen your own product before?
Can you come at your product as if you've never seen it before?
Can you come at your messaging, your clients as if anew and give yourself the gift of neutrality to see it anew, to see it from a neutral stance?
This is why, you know, people love working with mentors, because mentors, when they are of integrity, are working from a state of neutrality.
And a mentor, a high quality mentor, shouldn't be projecting their emotions onto their clients. They should be able to observe their clients experience from neutrality.
So you can be your own mentor, you can be the mentor of your business, you can be the mentor of your company by coming at it from a state of neutrality and listening to both sides, to the story that each one is bringing.
And then from those two stories, from those two perspectives, where is the dissonance?
So, you know, if we take two people, for instance, and I do this a lot with my boys because I have young boys and they're often in conflict, so there'll be a conflict and I'll bring them both in front of me and I'll say, okay, Monty, tell me your story, tell me your side of it.
And you know, Willie, my other son, doesn't get to interrupt. He doesn't get to say anything. Monty gets to tell his side of the story. And sometimes I ask questions and I clarify and I ensure that I'm receiving this fullness of the story, of his perspective, his perspective that I can.
And then when that's complete, I ask my second son and his perspective and his side of the story, and sure enough, there's always points of the story that aren't the same.
The he said, she said, right? The something, somebody's not telling the truth or whatever it is, because, you know, son number one is saying that this happened. Son number two is saying that happened.
And it doesn't mean that anybody is lying.
There can be lying, but also every single person perceives their reality through their filters, and their filters are their belief structures. And therefore they literally perceive their reality uniquely to them.
Ten people experiencing the exact same circumstance don't experience that same circumstance the exact same way.
So it's not always lying.
Sometimes it literally is a different perspective.
But as you now have the story, you now have the information.
Where is that dissonance? Where does the story not align?
And that is where your focus goes, that is where your energy goes. Again, not in going back to the. The example of my two boys, you know, not in. Okay, who's lying? One of you is lying. Stop lying. Right? That doesn't solve anything.
But continuing to inquire, okay, well, boy one said this, but boy two, you're saying that.
And it goes the same for relational conflicts within our business, conflicts within the teams.
Understanding.
Like, for instance, if it's between two teams, is it really the full teams, or is it kind of like two people, the head of the departments, the head of the teams that are maybe butting heads, right, and bringing them in and having the conversation with them.
If it's the conflict between your product and the customer, right, Looking at the product and what it's bringing and the problem that it's solving, and then looking at the customer and what problem they need solved, and is that still lining up? Or now all of a sudden, did that problem shift because something in the market shifted, and now the problem that your product was fulfilling isn't there, or it's not as needed or it's not as readily, you know, in the forefront, because maybe there's other problems or other things that are arising that are more important.
You know, example that's coming up right now is Covid, right? Covid threw the wrench into all these businesses because all of a sudden, things that were relevant to the human experience were no longer relevant.
The human experience radically shifted.
And for a business to stay relevant, you had to shift.
So what is the information on both sides? And where is that dissonance? And now you can hear what's really going on now you can hone in on that note that is off tune.
And now you can allow the song, the melody to show you where it's not flowing anymore, and that's exactly what will happen.
So what I mean by that is if you're able to listen and you're able to stay neutral and hold presence to the conflict, it will reveal itself to you.
You don't have to have special powers.
You don't have to know the market or, you know, have some sort of certification in how the market communicates or products or teams or psychology. You don't have to have any of that. All you have to do is show up to the moment, show up to the information you're being given, and sometimes give it a little bit of spaciousness.
Kind of like when you take a deep breath before you speak, you give yourself a moment of spaciousness before you speak, sometimes after you have the information.
Stepping away from the conflict is beneficial, not always. Sometimes that's not needed. Sometimes if it's between you and your partner, stepping away might cause more conflict.
But if you're in that moment and the resolution is not revealing itself to you, or you're losing your neutrality, you're becoming emotional, you're becoming triggered, and you can't be neutral with your triggers, that's the time to step away for a moment.
Whether that is three breaths worth of a moment, or whether that's half a day, whether that's a week, if it's a really big conflict and a big deal that matters, don't be afraid to grant a moment of spaciousness, to let the conflict reveal itself even more.
So a lot of times, going back to my children, just because it's such an obvious example and we all understand this type of conflict, I'll point out where the dissonance is. Well, you're saying this, and you're saying this again. No, no judgment. I'm not telling them that they're lying. I'm not accusing them of anything. I'm just stating what's already very obvious.
And then I pause and I don't say anything.
And every single time, what happens is one or both boys tell a little bit more of the story that maybe they didn't tell before or they'd forgotten and they didn't tell. Who knows why doesn't really matter. They tell more of the story, and every single time, it resolves itself. Now, it's a little bit different with a business. If you have to take action and you have to implement things, it doesn't necessarily resolve itself, but the resolution will reveal itself. One of my favorite things to do is to hold an inquiry in my mind. So if you're with a conflict and you just can't quite seem to find that resolution, you step away and you ask the question, what is this resolution? What is the solution to this problem?
And I like to just ask the question, and I don't try to answer it. Your mind will. Your mind will go, oh, well, let me see. I could do this or this or this. But that doesn't necessarily mean that's the resolution. It doesn't. That's not the conflict exposing itself to you.
Just like the note will show how, even though I'm not musically inclined, so I could be getting this slightly wrong, the note will show you how it's out of tune, right?
What really belongs there.
If you're musically inclined, that'll be very obvious to you. In business, when we don't have the answer and we just hold the inquiry, hold the question, hold the conflict in our awareness and go do something fun, go do something that you enjoy and just allow, allow yourself to contemplate, allow yourself to ponder, allow yourself to ask the question without having the answer.
This is where the conflict reveals itself.
And how do you know when a conflict has revealed itself? Because it's effortless.
Not only is it effortless, it is the obvious solution and is an immediate. Even if it takes action, even if it takes perhaps a period of action, right, that takes time.
It is a resolution that immediately returns flow back to the melody, to the song.
You will be able to see that as you implement that, no matter how long that implementation takes, that it will immediately return the flow back to whatever it is that's in conflict.
And now not only have you resolved conflict, you've actually adjusted something that needed adjustment within your business.
And if you really start to understand what I'm teaching here today, you begin to listen to your business with different ears.
And conflict becomes something that you enjoy. Because now you can be two steps ahead of the game. You can be potentially five, ten steps ahead of your competitors because you're listening with different ears.
And as those tiny little conflicts start to approach, start to come up, start to show themselves to you and you act upon them, you stay in flow versus waiting and ignoring and denying and blaming. And now they. There's a massive wrench in the fluidity of your business.
Now there truly is an issue. Now one of your greatest managers or people are quitting.
Now your product sales go flat, whatever it is, because you couldn't hear the initial moments where going back to the story of my two boys, they start to bicker before, you know, they full on hit each other or become something more like that. The bicker, the little, the little moments, you tune into that and with your partner, this is transformational because you start to notice when your partner is in dissonance, maybe not even with you, just dissonance with something and that level of empathy. And you step in and you have that awareness and that inquiry and you assist your partner in that little something that isn't quite sitting right for them. And now they feel really seen and supported by you.
And you do that for your employees and you do that for your clients.
And now everybody feels like you're showing up in a completely different way simply because your perspective of conflict shifted into resolution. And now all you see is opportunity for resolution, opportunity for more flow, more ease, more effortless, more abundance, more scalability, more everything. A really fun exercise to do right now, in this very moment, is simply from a place of curiosity inquiry.
Is there anywhere in your life, in your business, in your relationships, that you're experiencing conflict? Take a moment to ponder that. Is there any conflict anywhere?
And right now, in this very moment, see if there is any. You're not searching for it, you don't have to find it.
Curiosity does not require an answer. Curiosity is an open ended inquiry.
Hmm. Is there anywhere where I'm experiencing conflict in my life that I've either been ignoring and denying and not addressing, or I haven't even fully admitted that there's conflict there?
Maybe you're subconsciously denying it.
And can you now remember, step one is notice the conflict from a state of neutrality.
Notice the two positions, the two sides, the two relations that are in conflict. And then can you listen to both sides, a state of neutrality.
And then finally let it show you the resolution.
So play with that.
Play with it from fun, play with it from a state of curiosity and notice what arises for you because you can already make these adjustments and create more flow, more ease for yourself effortlessly. As always, I'm so grateful that you joined me here today. Until next time, much love.
[00:28:10] Speaker B: Thank you for listening to the Sacred Sadist podcast from Bound to Liberated.
Connect with us on Instagram at the Sacred Sadist or on YouTube @aloRage.
Until next time.
